


I can't sleep (I can still taste you in my mouth)

by Lizicia



Category: Bourne (Movies), Bourne Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, SPOILERS for Jason Bourne, alt ending for nicky because I can write it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7823362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizicia/pseuds/Lizicia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I will find you.”<br/>He says it without meaning to; he is not in the habit of making hopeless promises but he wants to, this time.<br/>He might just need her, after all.</p><p>Post-Jason Bourne (2016).<br/>Or, the one where women are more than props for men to get revenge for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I can't sleep (I can still taste you in my mouth)

**Author's Note:**

> I highly anticipated "Jason Bourne" and then it let me down big time within the first 30 mins or so. If you haven't see the movie yet, there be spoilers in here.
> 
> Title from Warsan Shire.

It’s been almost ten years since he last saw Nicky face to face. It’s all been about dead drops and packages. Safer, easier, untraceable, exchanging information and data, never for the sake of a connection but for the necessity.

So he has had only one real image of her for years now – dark cropped hair, boarding a bus in Tangiers, fear of the unknown flashing in her eyes.

But he’s imagined her in plenty of ways since. Jason used to think these were illusions but with every year that he’s come closer to remembering everything, he knows that they weren’t. Nicky did have long hair, once, in another life.

So when he sees her among the crowd during the fight, he’s certain it was a figment of his imagination; after all, it is not uncommon for his eyes to trick him into seeing her on the streets. The fact that she was real seemed almost impossible.

Seeing her among the flames and smoke and chaos in Athens, he’s almost taken aback by the forcefulness of the memories that wash over him as he sees that her hair is long again.

And that look in her eyes is familiar, too. The look she carried with her once before.

_“It was difficult for me. With you.”_

He’s wondered what it meant for years but now he knows, he understands the pain and the longing and the jagged edges hidden behind that simple sentence.

He is still unable to deal with it, though.

“What’s wrong?”

Turns out, it’s everything.

Logically, he understands Nicky’s choices, her motivations, her drive. She’s been repenting for her part in Treadstone ever since he put a gun to her head in Berlin. He sometimes wonders when she thinks she’ll be done; over the years, she’s been going deeper and deeper, associating with people more than a little bit dangerous, and he hasn’t found the way to make her stop.

When she says that she’s found things about him, he can hear what is implicit. _I took this risk for you. For your peace of mind._

Jason doesn’t want that from her. He wants her to just live and stop trying to make amends for the past.

Sometimes, in the dark crevasses of what is left of his heart, he wants her to live that life with him.

But that is an impossibility, Nicky’s gasping breaths on the pavement of Athens a stark reminder of the kind of life they can never lead.

He doesn’t want to think about Marie but he remembers Goa all the same; that’s why he yelled at Nicky to stay low, because he knew what could happen. He remembered what had happened already.

She keeps her eyes steady on him when she gasps out, “Go!”

He almost wants to shake his head, to yell, to refuse even when he’s already calculated that it’s the logical thing to do.

“I will find you.”

He says it without meaning to; he is not in the habit of making hopeless promises but he wants to, this time. He wants to believe that she’ll make it, that her life will not end on this unnamed street in the middle of Athens, in the midst of a riot, and just because of him.

He might just need her, after all.

He still hopes when all the dust has settled, when it’s been a week. He calls embassies in Athens, speaks English, Russian, Romanian, German, convinces countless officials that he’s looking for his girlfriend who was last seen during the riots. He uses dozens of fake identities, tries all variations that he knows she might use.

He gets nowhere until he tries the US embassy in a last, fleeting ray of hope, and asks about Christina Geller, the oldest of her identities that he can remember – and almost the only American one.

“Oh, yes, sir. She was transferred from Athens to DC just yesterday. Did you lose the contact information for the hospital?”

For a second, Jason thinks his heart stops but instead of the world falling out from underneath his feet, it is reinforced, and his heart continues to beat even stronger.

“Yes, thank you so much. I think it must have been her family who had her transferred and they don’t approve, if you know what I mean.”

The woman on the other end chuckles good-naturedly. “Aunt Pam perhaps? The transfer order was signed by Pamela Landy.”

“Makes sense.” He lies through his teeth because none of this really makes sense but he gets the information about the hospital anyways.

He doesn’t know what the deal is, why Landy is involved so he does what he always does.

He watches her take lunch behind her desk in the new slick private security firm that she runs as he calls her.

“Pamela Landy.”

“Why her?”

He can see her startle and then look around as if to check if someone’s listening in.

“Jason Bourne. Seems like every five years or so you manage to get back into my life.”

“What do you need Nicky for?”

She’s silent for a moment, as if the question comes as a surprise but it couldn’t have.

“She needed protection, and I was in a position to offer it to her. Seems like the Agency is still the corrupted boys club it was when I left, and I knew she would be caught in the middle; she already _was_.”

“What are you getting from it?”

Landy sighs and he can see her shake her head lightly. “Would you believe me if I said _nothing_?”

“No.”

“Then let’s say, I get to talk to you for seven minutes.” There is a pause before she continues, as if she’s not sure if she wants to say the next part. “I knew you cared for her.”

He doesn’t respond to that; such knowledge is dangerous enough without him saying anything.

“When they found her in Athens, she had an old ID with her and when they traced her in the system, it pinged to me because I have been keeping an eye out for it. The Agency burned it years ago.”

“They have a trace of everything.”

“I had something to trade for her life. Information which I’d held on to, in case it proved to be valuable and necessary at one point. And it did. The Agency has very graciously pardoned her.”

“That sounds too good to be true.”

“I also promised them that she would never get involved with you again.”

He’s silent but he knows that he’ll do it, whatever needs to be done. Nicky’s safe, she’s unharmed, _she_ can live now.

“Okay.”

“Just like that? You won’t look for her again?”

“I never have.” A beat of silence, and he can’t help himself. “Get some rest, Pam. You look tired.”

He doesn’t wait around to see her swivel in her chair and try to look into the countless skyscrapers surrounding her office but leaves quickly, in case her words were not as good as she made them sound, in case there is a tactical team ready to storm every building in sight and still capture him.

A part of him wants to be selfish and find Nicky, see her, talk to her, touch her, feel how _alive_ she is.

That part is selfish and he buries it.

He becomes Christopher Michaels, the man from his latest passport, an American who can buy a house in Maine, close enough to the Canadian border that he can flee if he ever needs to. A part of him thinks he should stick to big cities because they are more anonymous; a bigger part of him yearns for the quiet.

Heather doesn’t burn his identity and this is a surprise; she seems to think she can still mellow him into coming back, and he’ll let her have that fantasy.

He’s lost his appetite for violence and bloodshed; mostly, he’s just tired. He runs along the coastline, breathing in the salty sea air and reveling in the freshness of it all. He has nothing but time now; time to think and process. He’s had time for the past ten years but it feels like a fresh start, like Athens happened in-between, and now he’s reinventing himself again.

So focused is he on a new way of life that he almost misses the footsteps on his porch when he gets back from a run but his sense of awareness is as keen as ever so he knows that he’s not alone in the house, and his hand automatically reaches for the cupboard where he keeps the gun closest to the doorway.

“Hey.”

Instead of an intruder, it’s Nicky, standing in the middle of the living room. Jason quickly catalogues her: hair shorter, face more angular, neck lightly bandaged, pale, but breathing.

Alive, and in his house.

“What are you doing here?”

He doesn’t mean to be harsh but he can’t help it when the frustration over her coming to find him, again, bleeds into his voice. This time, she doesn’t waver.

“I came to see you.”

“You can’t be here.”

“I know, Landy told me.” She shrugs slightly. “What could they do to me that they already haven’t tried? I’ve survived two assassination attempts.”

“This is serious, Nicky.”

She looks him straight in the eye now, and he can see the familiar glint in her eye, the one from the café, from Athens. “Do you remember everything now?”

He can’t lie to her. “Yes.”

“So you know.”

She could mean any number of things with that but he knows what she’s saying. _So you know why it was hard for me. So you know what it meant._

_So you know I loved you._

She doesn’t say anything else but continues looking at him, searching his face for something. He doesn’t know what to give her; it’s been years since anyone demanded such a thing from him; years since _she_ demanded it.

But then he remembers that she almost died. That the bullet which nicked her neck could’ve been more devastating, that there could’ve been a second shot, that her standing in front of him at all is a miracle in itself.

So he gives her the one truth he’s been trying to work around this whole time. The truth which sat heavy on his soul when he told Landy that he would not find her again, and which has been beating a relentless rhythm every night he’s dreamt of her smile.

“I care about you.”

It’s not a sweeping declaration, nor a passionate embrace but Nicky smiles softly, the way she’s only smiled in his deepest memories, and never in their new lives.

“Well, then.” She steps closer to him, finally, and takes his hand in hers; the intimacy it evokes is new and familiar at once. From there, she slides her fingers up his arm, onto his shoulder and carefully, telegraphing her moves so that he can know what is coming, moves in to hug him. He wraps his arms around her slowly but the feel of her so close to him after all the years – after more than a decade – is still so familiar.

“I missed you too.”

Nicky whispers it into his ear and he finally knows that he’s home.


End file.
